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Saturday, November 05, 2011

I'm way ahead of my previous record pace this year. Five days into this and I'm a day and half ahead, averaging 2400 words a day and maintaining a home life.

It's a NaNo miracle. For me at least.

If I can keep up this pace, I'll have written 72,000 words in November alone. That would be a serious record for me if I can do it. I hope I can keep it up because that's almost a real novel-length story there.

So where are my characters at? At 5,000 words, both my main characters had been introduced and had brief origin stories. At 10,000 words they still haven't met and likely won't for another 10,000 or so. Maybe a little more. That's about seventy pages in, if my calculations are right. (Actually I'm using Scrivener so they're probably right. Likely right.) There's been some mayhem, some death-dealing and some interstellar travel. I've also laid the groundwork for the big villain's entrance and the little villain, the MacGuffin bad guy, is there, too.

I'd love to share some of it with you, but I'm not gonna. Not yet. There are bigger scenes coming down that I want you to read.

Oh, hell, hang on, let me go grab a bit for you.

Before you read it, if you don't remember the premise, here it is. Okay, now go ahead and read.

“What do you think you’re doing?” The casino’s AI was indignant.

“My name is Juggy. I’m an MH1997 McCarthy AI parked in a geostationary orbit with authorization Alpha Lima seven five slash Uniform zero four and my owner is being kidnapped in your lobby,” Juggy said in machinespeak to the other AI. “I need your help and access. Throw up the necessary firewalls to protect your sensitive information so I can help him.”

“I don’t care who you are, where you’re from or who you’re with,” the Jardin said. “You can’t just push your way in here.”

“There’s no time for this,” Juggy said. “Help me or I’ll fry your mainframe enough for a hard reset.”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“Two seconds. One.”

“All right,” the Jardin said. “Here. Stay out of the accounts and accounting. What can I do to help you?”

“Right now stay out of my way,” Juggy said. He trained all the cameras in the lobby on Fesson and Alu and the third man, whose name was Prano and had also been one of the losers at the poker table. Obviously they meant to rob Alu. Juggy tuned in the piezos so that he could hear what Fesson and Prano were saying.

I'll admit I'm having a blast writing this. It's not like anything I've written before and while I'm taking it seriously, it's not all that serious. I'm thinking visually, adding more description than I've used before and the dialogue is coming a lot easier, which is weird because dialogue is what I think is one of my strengths. Matter of fact it's all a lot easier this year.

It may have something to do with the incredible amount of support from my fellow Wrimos. We're following each other on Twitter, our Facebook account is more active than ever before and the NaNo forums are buzzing. We're pushing each other, supporting each other and damn if it doesn't feel like one hell of an extended family. I think I've finally found the group I've been looking for. I love that crew. They're amazing writers and wonderful people.

More on that after NaNo's over though. For now, back to the keyboard. Or my life. Whichever needs the attention right now.